Entertainment

With Google TV Looming, Can the Boxee Box Prevail?

Boxee, the popular home theater PC program, has received another serious blow in its quest to become a living room mainstay, as the release of its much-anticipated Boxee Box has been pushed back to November of this year. In fact, the delay might prove fatal to Boxee's set-top hardware.

In a blog post, Co-founder and CEO Avner Ronen announced that the device is being pushed back from Q2 2010 (which ends this month) to November because the "time-frame proved overly ambitious."

"Earlier this week we got confirmation that the Boxee Box by D-Link will ship this November in US and Canada. We realize many of you have waited months to purchase the Boxee Box, and we know how frustrating this is. Believe us when we say that both Boxee & D-Link want to start selling Boxee Boxes yesterday."

While delays are normal in the development of any piece of hardware, Boxee cannot afford this delay, as Google TV approaches its high-profile release with the velocity of a high speed train.

The Looming Google TV Wave

At Google I/O last month, the search giant revealed Google TV, its most ambitious project yet. The company, already dominant on the web and rapidly gaining traction on mobile, has its eyes on TV's $70 billion advertising market and the four billion people using TVs.

Google TV is a platform with the goal of integrating the TV and the web into one seamless experience. It includes Adobe Flash, can search TV and the web simultaneously, runs Android apps, and can be purchased in the fall as either an external set-top box or through a new line of integrated Sony TVs.

Now, compare that to Boxee's vision for the Boxee Box:

"Our vision is to make the Boxee experience on a set top box as good as (and where we can, better than) the one you already know on a PC. The goal is to play HD videos from the web or a local network in 1080p and use hardware acceleration whenever possible. And to provide a TV browser experience that can handle almost everything you throw at it, including Flash 10.1. Not to mention making all this happen for an affordable price and on a quiet device that will not feel obsolete 12 months after you buy it."

Sound similar, right? While Boxee's "Social Media Center" supports an impressive range of TV channels and online content, Google TV comes equipped with a myriad of advantages (Android, Google Search, thousands of engineers) and tons of marketing muscle. Intel, Sony, Dish Network, Adobe, Best Buy and Logitech have all doubled down on Google's platform, and you can bet they will blanket the airwaves with their pitch for Google's television platform.

When we first learned of Google TV, we knew it would be a major threat to Boxee and the Boxee Box, which is being built by D-Link. It's become a more dire situation though now that the Boxee Box will be released after Google TV hits the market.

Let's face it: The vast majority of consumers aren't going to buy two set-top boxes or try to use two platforms. They're going to pick one, and if the choice is between the lesser-known Boxee and the better-known and better-funded Google... well, it's not even a contest.

Can Boxee's Box prevail in these market conditions? It's tough to have an optimistic outlook on its chances. Boxee has surprised us before and it has a very loyal fanbase, but hardware is a whole different game. Google has the partners and the clout to crush the Boxee Box long before it reaches anybody's living room.

Mashable
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